


The First

by SelkieSwarm



Series: As The Crow Flies [1]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Gen, Girl in NHL, Male-Female Friendship, it is super vague though, sports-typical fatphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 02:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19122715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SelkieSwarm/pseuds/SelkieSwarm
Summary: Life is full of surprises.Sometimes, those surprises include getting selected in the first round of the 2007 NHL draft alongside your best friend, becoming the first woman drafted by an NHL team, and hitting a new friend in the face with your brand new cell phone all in the space of two minutes.





	The First

**Author's Note:**

> If you somehow ended up here googling yourself or somebody you know, please for the love of god hit the back button right now and spare us both eternal shame. 
> 
> Ages ago, I read a Girl In The NHL story that ended up leaving me really unsatisfied in the main character so I decided to be the change I wanted to see. But I'm like totally incapable of writing normal humans, so I went the urban fantasy route.
> 
> Enter Lina "Crow" Voronin, a mer/fae with a mess of a family background and a passion for cosmetology, stand up comedy, and long naps who also happens to be a fairly highly regarded forward for the Halifax Mooseheads. 
> 
> (Also even though it's not likely it'll ever come up, for some reason it's still very important to me that anybody who reads this knows I've decided Brent Burns is part sasquatch and is a cousin of the guy in the Jack Link's jerky commercials.)
> 
> Anyways, this series as a whole is a massive multipart nightmare that started as a NaNoWriMo project and (so far) spans bits and pieces of ten NHL seasons. It is nowhere close to done so bear with me. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed reliving all these moments in CBJ history!

_No one seems to be quite sure what to make of Lina Voronin._

_On the one hand, the first woman to register for the NHL draft has excellent vision, a deceptive shot, and plays with a physical edge. She's well liked in the room in Halifax and several people who interviewed her during the combine raved about her work ethic and coachability. There have been no complaints about liaisons with teammates or sleeping around. She's the adopted daughter of recently-retired Blackhawks director of amateur scouting Lisette Sureau and granddaughter of 2 time Stanley Cup champion Pascal Sureau and as a member of the Sureau family in name if not in practice (three of her four siblings are potential draft picks in 2010, as well as their paternal cousin Rebecka Ahlgren), she's fully aware of what's expected at her at this level of the game._  
  
_On the other hand, she's of course very small. Her skating and faceoffs need work and is considered a highly emotional player. The Dublin, Ireland-born Voronin loses control of her temper too quickly and is easily moved to tears even on the ice. Several scouts have indicated to me that they're going to pass on her because of the risks associated with openly fae heritage, and her refusal to discuss much of her life before her adoption has been noted as potentially troubling._  
  
_There have also been concerns about her weight and conditioning, though sources familiar with fae players have pointed out to me that fae require a very different diet and that Voronin is a female selkie (a seal shapeshifter), therefore her metabolism is unlike anything usually experienced by human standards. The number on the scale means nothing, but teams who are already unsure about acquiring a fae player are likely to consider this another mark against her._  
  
_It also remains to be seen how she'll handle being in a league of men without the stabilizing influence of her linemate, best friend, and probable top ten pick Jakub Voracek. With proper development and coaching she could be a significant asset to any team's top six, but I'm not sure how many teams are willing to put that sort of energy into a small fae player who will attract media attention regardless of whether she does well."_  
  
Lina taped the prospect evaluation into a notebook filled with them, all heavily marked with red pens. "So according to this one I'm gonna get passed over for my heritage and people wonder how I'm gonna react when we end up on different teams." Her brogue, still prominent despite her eight years in the US, shifted into a very Chicago accent when she was moderately annoyed… which it was doing now.  
  
Jake laughed, immune to both his BFF's annoyance and to what Lina liked to call 'general fae-ignorant dumbfuckery'. "I can fix half of that! Go to college instead if you have to go somewhere you don't like! Then you'll sign with my team." 

She grinned at him. He really did make staying grumpy almost impossible. “Just walk in like 'yes hello Jake and Friends, I'm Lina the medieval history major from Notre Dame, I'm here to help fuck shit up'.”

They both snickered then sighed in unison, a habit that every single one of their Mooseheads teammates claimed was incredibly creepy.

“Hey, I forgot to ask, who wanted to pick your brain during the interviews?” she asked.

“I think everybody! You?”

She made a noncommittal gesture to try and hide the sudden spike of terror the question gave her. “I got like a quarter of the league, which is more than I thought.  St Louis went the best, I think, but I'm obviously hoping for the Hawks.”

“No surprise there!” He prodded the red and yellow C tattoo on her inner arm. “but they're not passing on Kane, so do they actually think you'll still be available in the second round?” She scowled and swatted his hand with maybe enough force to startle a puppy, making him laugh again.

“Don't get my hopes up. With all of this shit that people were ever so kind enough to let me know about,” she waved the notebook at his face, ”sounds like I'll be lucky if I go in the seventh and I was smart to ask my folks not to come.“

"We gotta leave soon, but you'll see,” Jake told her with the self-satisfied smugness of a flat earther.

She made a face at him, which he cheerfully ignored in favor of kicking a pile of their dirty laundry out of the way enough to actually get the door open.

"You ever think we need to be neater, Crow?”

“Nah. We're equally disgusting so we're best roomies. It's fine.”

With no further ado, they headed out of the hotel and across the street to meet up with fellow Moosehead Logan MacMillan, his folks, and Jake's folks outside of the arena before heading on into Nationwide.

After loitering around the arena, making nice with the fans while they wandered around, getting their credentials cleared and chatting with some of their new friends the prospects were all shepherded into the stands to wait for the start of the event.

Hunkered down in a seat in between Jake and Logan, the haze of terror made retaining anything in detail hard for Lina. She did notice during the announcement of the design of Columbus's new Reebok jerseys (modeled by Rick Nash and Dan Fritsche, because of course the face of the team and the Ohio boy would be the models) that a lot more Jackets fans turned up than she'd thought.

It was nice to see the game doing so well in a market without an extensive hockey history, and when that market that had ended up with such a bad team to boot.

Kaner went first overall like everyone expected, and Lina was pulled out of her own head enough to cheer and clap for her new friend. She'd promised to text him a bunch of things to do if he went to Chicago and she couldn't be happier that she had to follow through.

But she didn't pay attention to the next five picks because she was too busy trying not to let her breakfast come back up. Around pick seven she remembered _shit, the dog needs to be fed her heartworm tablet_ and started to text her dad to ask him to medicate her basset hound.

When pick number seven rolled around, Columbus's brand new general manager Scott Howson stepped up to the podium. An unimpressive looking man with kind eyes but no authoritative presence whatsoever, he got a “good fucking luck buddy” ovation for the guy who wanted to try and untangle the mess Doug MacLean had left. 

Beside Lina, Jake went stock still before elbowing her a couple times. “You should probably finish whatever you're doing,” he whispered. She stared at him blankly for a beat or two before remembering he had a minor prophetic gift.

“You getting a read?”

“On something, yeah. Finish up.”

She quickly wrote  _ hey wiggles needs her heartworm pill today _ but before she could even hit send,  Howson cleared his throat. 

“The Columbus Blue Jackets have made a trade.

It was such a simple statement but it sent the whole arena from buzzing to dead silent.

_ The only way it could get any quieter is if someone held a pillow over the face of every single person in here, jiminy fuck. _

“The Blue Jackets have traded their second round pick in the 2007 draft as well as their first and second round picks in the 2008 entry draft to the Boston Bruins. In exchange Columbus receives the eighth overall pick in the 2007 entry draft from Boston.

"With the seventh overall pick the Blue Jackets select, from the Halifax Mooseheads of the QMJHL… Jakub Voracek! With the eighth overall pick the Blue Jackets select, also from the Mooseheads… Akilina Voronin!”

It was only for a second or so but Lina dissociated hard enough she could barely hear the screams of the crowd, or feel Jake and Logan pounding her on the back.

 _Somebody wanted_ **_me_** _! They traded for_ **_me_** _! I get to stay with Jake and somebody actually wanted me!_

Lina abruptly crash landed back into her own body when she realized was on the video board as her friends dragged her out of her chair and hugged her. The fierce burn of joy and pride faded into horror when she realized she had something in her hand that _probably_ didn't belong there in a moment like this.

 _Ohshitphone_ **_phonePHONE_ ** **_PHONE_ ** **PHONE**  

A critically thinking, reasonably intelligent adult would’ve jammed the thing into a pocket.

However as Lina was 18 and therefore dumb as dirt, she opted to panic and hurl her brand new phone over her shoulder instead.

During a televised event that was being watched internationally to boot.

“Ow! Crow, why?!”

She spun around and a dump truck sized pile of guilt hit as soon as she made contact with the watering eyes of Riley Nash.  

“Oh god Nasher I'm so sorry I didn't mean to! Are you okay?”

Riley touched his lip a few times before stuffing her phone into her hand and  grabbing her in a one armed hug. “I'm fine, there's no blood. Get up there, and congratulations!”

She started to run down the stairs and stopped since Jake was still hugging it out with his folks and Lina had apparently made a massive mistake in telling her parents not to come. Instead she turned back to the fans, threw both fists into the air and yelled, “We're gonna have some fun this year, right Columbus?”

All she knew at that moment in time was she wanted these fans to like her because they were _her people_ now too, and the cheer she got in return made the floor tremble underneath her.

She resumed her sprint down the stairs to pull on a navy jersey, get gladhanded by the commish, do interviews (her favorite question was "did you know you're the first person from the Republic of Ireland to be selected in the NHL draft?", because she was able to reply "I did not! Then I'm the happiest leprechaun with gigantism who's ever left the old country!" and get chuckles out of people around her), have pictures taken, and go through all of the formal hoopla only to get cheered again when she and Jake screamed at each other wordlessly before hugging.

Lina certainly hadn't expected to start her career in Columbus but she thought she'd do quite nicely here.


End file.
